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What children need 
by Victoria Carlton, Director International Centre For Excellence

All children can learn. All children have strengths and weaknesses. We must give children what they need in order to improve their learning potential. They must be taught in ways they understand.

Children need to have their learning needs placed at the central point of the programme. Friendly, stimulating, attractive and non-judgemental learning environments are essential. Children need calm places where they can learn to concentrate and reflect on their learning. The International School of Excellence (ICE) has worked hard to create learning environments where children of all ages, abilities, problems and talents can come to reach their potential and find out that learning is fun!

A glimpse into one of our learning sessionsÖ

Jamie is bored. His legs are swinging wildly under the table and he has begun the tapping with his fingers that so annoys the other children. He cannot listen any more as he is a visual learner and is on auditory overload. His tutor allows him to go into the concentration area and juggle for a while and view the PowerPoint presentation she has prepared. He is on our ëSparky Brainsí programme and is learning strategies to concentrate without using medication.

Susie is upset and close to tears because she cannot read the instructions.  She has come in from a stressful day at school where she is experiencing a high degree of daily failure. Her teacher gently reads the instructions to her out to her and reminds her to practise reading and tracing her basic words in the class sand tray. Susie is dyslexic and needs a complete multi-sensory approach to make sense from reading and writing. She has mastered stage one of our basic sight vocabulary and will soon be placed on the next stage of our ëRainbow Learning Programmeí.

Mark is angry; so angry he wants to hit the children in his group! He is taken to a safe area and allowed to paint his anger and make a clay model. After 15 minutes he has relaxed and can join the group. Mark is in our ëEQ4KIDZí group and is learning to identify and handle his feelings.

Jed is practising kinesiology exercises with his tutor. He is not ready for group work. He needs plenty of brain stimulation and our basic skills programme to bring him back to balance. He will be ready for a small group in a few weeks.

Mary is on the floor playing a strategy maths game with bottle tops. She beats her tutor and gleefully suggests a game with the new logic puzzle. She is nine and the puzzle caters for ages 12 to adult. Mary is gifted in the maths area but hates the subject at school because she is bored. She comes to us for a weekly maths challenge and takes games and challenges home to keep her brain awake during the week.

Nearby, Celeste, who is in Year Eight, is using ìhands onî equipment to understand basic percentages and fractions. She has never understood these before and is at long last seeing that maths may not be a foreign language.

Kenny is looking sad again and walks in reluctantly. He has only just begun his programme at ICE and needs to recover his self-esteem. Kenny was not ready for reading at school; he needed to run outside and build and play. When Kenny was made to sit at a desk for long hours and realised most of his schoolmates could read, he was sure he was stupid. We are helping him to ìwriteî his own reading books. He tells us what to write and we type them. Kenny takes his books home and proudly ìreadsî them. In a few weeks we can start a structured reading programme. Penny, John and Sasha are working on some new ways of studying Year 12 Biology. Their tutor is showing them how to mind map and use graphic organisers. Close by, Brian and Matt are working on science experiments with their tutor. They are in our ëBudding Scientistsí group and are blissfully unaware of all the spelling, writing and maths they are doing to complete their book about crystals.

Ben is so proud as he has just read his first novel and is painting a series of pictures based on the main points of the story. As he chats to his teacher and tells him the main events he is unaware he is working to improve comprehension. Ben will be a famous artist one day. He is nine years and his art is all over the walls. Most parents think his paintings are done by a professional artist.

This is just a normal, everyday scenario in our centres. Children do not come in neat packages with instructions how to teach them. We must find the learning key for each child, and gently lead it down the path to success. Generally speaking, we need to change the learning methods and environments- not the child! Please call us at ICE, 9478 3323 or 0409 911135 if you would like us to help your child reach their full learning potential.